Adam and Eve

Max Beckmann made this oil painting, Adam and Eve, sometime around 1917, though no one knows exactly when. It's pretty clear he wasn't trying to give us a photo-realistic picture, but something much more internal, right? I'm really drawn to the way Beckmann handles the paint. It’s like he’s wrestling with it, trying to get something out of the material itself. The colors are muted and chalky, almost like a fresco, and the paint is applied in these nervous, scratchy strokes that give the whole surface a kind of agitated energy. Take a look at the wolf’s eyes right behind Eve. There’s this incredible intensity, and I think it says a lot about the complexity of human desire and temptation. The German Expressionists often used this kind of directness to get to some deeper, maybe darker, truth. Think about the work of Otto Dix, also doing very psychologically fraught paintings around the same time. It’s like they’re all asking, "What does it mean to be human in a world gone mad?"